When Dolphin went open-source in 2008, it was released under the GPLv2 license. However it has since been relicensed to GPLv2+. According to the license, you may use Dolphin and its source code for any purpose, but distributing Dolphin requires that the source code be released and attribution given. For more details, see the license document.

Requisits de maquinari i del sistema

Dolphin is a cross-platform emulator that runs on Windows (7 SP1 and newer), Linux, and macOS (10.10 Yosemite and up). For their ease of use and additional graphics backend options, Windows is generally recommended for most users. Other Unix-like systems (such as FreeBSD) may work but are not officially supported. Operating systems are required to be 64-bit to run Dolphin.

As well, Dolphin runs on Android 5.0 and up on 64-bit Android devices. The Android version of Dolphin is in alpha and should not be expected to work as well as the PC counterpart.

Dolphin is a dual core application that relies upon IPC (Instructions Per Clock) and clockspeed for performance. Additional cores will not make Dolphin go any faster, though an "extra" core that Dolphin isn’t using may help slightly by keeping background tasks from using the same cores as Dolphin.

Accordingly, the perfect CPU for Dolphin has high IPC, a high clock rate, and four cores or more. With four cores, Dolphin has two cores for the main emulation threads, a third core for other tasks, and another core for the operating system and background tasks to run without taking resources from the emulator.

Intel: For the most part, newer is better when it comes to Intel processors. Within a single generation of processors, the difference between i5 and i7 (hyperthreading/extra core counts) don't affect Dolphin very much. Newer generations will give higher performance per clock, and K series processors will allow for overclocking to gain extra performance. Be wary of U and Y series processors, as their reduced clockspeeds often struggle with Dolphin's workload.

AMD: Dolphin's workload didn't match the strengths of AMD processors until the Ryzen line. As such, we can only recommend Ryzen or newer for Dolphin among AMD's line of processors.

For more details, such as specific CPU recommendations, CPU comparisons, or what hardware you should purchase to get playable speeds on a specific game, please ask on our Hardware Forumbefore purchasing.

Note: For more information regarding CPU performance, please check out this handy benchmark that contains results from tons of users. It's important to remember that Dolphin is a console emulator with tons of optimizations and features. But, in the end, it does what the game instructs it to do. Some games only use features that are easy to emulate, and thus will run full-speed on just about any computer that supports Dolphin. Meanwhile, others struggle to run full speed at all times on even the most powerful of processors.

Choosing a GPU for Dolphin is a fairly simple task. The more powerful the graphics card, the more pixels and enhancements you can throw at it before you’ll see slowdown. However, the biggest thing to watch for is making sure the GPU supports DirectX11.1 and OpenGL 4.4. Dolphin emulates a console that functions very differently from a traditional PC, and uses the latest D3D and OGL features to reduce overhead. If you do not have those extensions, performance will suffer.

NVIDIA: Any modern mid-range or better NVIDIA GPU will be able to play Dolphin in HD resolutions with Ubershaders quite well. Old (6+ years) and/or low end GPUs may struggle, and are not recommended.

AMD: Any modern mid-range or better AMD GPU will perform well in Dolphin with Ubershaders. AMD generally favors D3D over OpenGL, so we recommend D3D for these GPUs. Old (6+ years) and/or low end GPUs may struggle, and are not recommended.

Intel: Iris Pro iGPUs will handle Dolphin well in D3D in Windows, though there are driver issues with the other graphics backends on that OS. A full fledged discrete graphics card is still highly recommended. IGPs older than the HD4000 are not supported.

Problemes d'instal·lació

The latest stable version of Dolphin is a good choice to start with: it works with a lot of games and is well tested. Development versions have the latest fixes and optimizations, but their constantly changing nature means that little testing has been done on them and unknown bugs may appear.

Our buildbot provides each revision of Dolphin in four variants on the main site:

Windows x64 for 64-bit Windows operating systems

macOS for 64-bit macOS computers

Android APKs for 64-bit Android

We no longer distribute Linux builds on our website, requiring users to build from source. Please see our Building Dolphin on Linux guide for instructions.

Dolphin does not support 32-bit operating systems. To check if your version of Windows is compatible with 64-bit applications, open the Start Menu, right click on Computer and select the Properties option. A window should appear, showing "64-bit operating system" as the System type if your Windows version can run Dolphin x64. If you are running a 32-bit operating system, you should upgrade to a 64-bit version to better utilize the abilities of your hardware.

On Android, Dolphin also requires 64-bit (ARMv8 AArch64). To see if your Android phone has the necessary requirements, simply run the APK, and Dolphin will alert you.

Do note that sometimes the buildbot is not always around for a build, and various revisions may not have built correctly for all OSes. If this occurs, it will be fixed in a short time.

Install the ScpToolkit driver package to get Windows to recognize your controller as a bluetooth device, or to connect a PS3 controller to your system. They can then be used in the Dolphin GCPad and Emulated Wiimote configuration.

Problemes comuns

Sometimes when you're running a game you may run into occasions where Dolphin is unable to run full-speed. Because the emulated console isn't running full-speed, it doesn't output as much audio as Dolphin needs. As such there end up being gaps in the audio, commonly referred to as audio stuttering by users.

This is not actually an audio issue, but a performance issue. Audio stuttering can be avoided by running Dolphin full-speed, or, in the latest development builds, activating time-stretched audio. Time-stretched audio will "stretch" the currently output audio over the gaps, allowing the game to sound more natural at the cost of some audio latency.

Even with a decade of work, Dolphin isn't a perfect emulator. This means you may encounter various issues that range from minor sound or graphics defects to game breaking errors and crashes. In order to provide users with as much information as possible, the Dolphin website hosts a wiki with thousands of pages dedicated to games and various features of the emulator. Game Specific pages often list problems a game has, solutions, and what settings are needed to make it run as accurately as possible.

If you find a bug in a game that isn't listed on the Wiki, please checkout the issue tracker and see if it is reported there. If it isn't, feel free to report the bug you found so that the developers are aware of the issue. Be aware, one of the rules you must follow before reporting an issue is make sure the issue isn't already fixed on the latest development version.

Dolphin is configured to run as fast as possible by default. However, for some games, that will cause a lot of problems, and they need more accurate and more demanding settings to run properly. For user convenience, many games have had these settings preconfigured in the "GameINI", a file with custom settings for each game.

By opening the graphics menu, you are overriding the GameINI default settings and instead using the settings within the graphics menu, which will be the global defaults or whatever you last set them to. If you are playing a game that needs accurate but demanding settings, opening the graphics menu will disable those settings and result in a speed up. However, you will then be subject to the glitches and problems the GameINI settings were protecting you from.

See the Dolphin Wiki for details on what games needs which settings to run correctly and why.